The jury in the ACT Supreme Court trial of a teenage girl charged with sexually assaulting and stalking her former boyfriend has been unable to reach a verdict.<\/p>\n
Warning: This story discusses suicide and domestic violence.<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:Suicide Call Back Service<\/a> on 1300 659 467Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN<\/a>\u00a0on 13 92 76Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 224 636Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890ReachOut<\/a> at au.reachout.com<\/a>MensLine Australia<\/a> on 1300 789 978SANE<\/a>\u00a0on 1800 187 263<\/p>\n The girl faced five charges, which included assault and encouraging the boy to take his own life.<\/p>\n The alleged comment came in an angry text exchange as they were breaking up.<\/p>\n The girl was 14 at the time and the boy 15.<\/p>\n The charges arose after the boy was hospitalised.<\/p>\n He gradually revealed his allegations, eventually making a complaint to police.<\/p>\n The evidence included an alleged assault when the pair was watching The Wizard of Oz, when out of the blue, the girl allegedly punched the boy hard in the face.<\/p>\n The court also heard allegations of a sexual assault, which allegedly occurred when the boy said he had been sleeping and was unable to give consent.<\/p>\n The court was also shown streams of text messages, mostly on Snapchat, and sometimes including communications with other people.<\/p>\n Family and domestic violence support services:’The Netflix trial’<\/p>\n Lawyers in the case dubbed it “the Netflix trial” because many of the teenage witnesses took the option of having their evidence pre-recorded.<\/p>\n Under the law, victims and other vulnerable people can choose to record their main evidence and to give evidence by video link, outside the courtroom.<\/p>\n The option is also available to children and young people.<\/p>\n Chief Justice Lucy McCallum noted the long hours the jury spent listening to the witnesses on video, and that it might not be to anyone’s benefit.<\/p>\n But recordings have the advantage that witnesses do not have to give the evidence twice in the event of a retrial.<\/p>\n Jury tensions<\/p>\n The case was marked by an unusually large number of notes from the jury, many with several questions at a time, seeking clarification on the charges and their responsibilities.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, it became evident from a jury note that there were tensions in the jury room and the jury was sent home for a day of rest on Thursday.<\/p>\n The girl’s lawyers suggested several times the jury should be discharged, raising concerns about what was going on in the jury room.<\/p>\n Today, after deliberating for several more hours, no verdict could be reached and the 12-member panel was released.<\/p>\n Without a verdict, the case will return to court in a month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The jury in the ACT Supreme Court trial of a teenage girl charged with sexually assaulting and stalking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2666,2667,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-170375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-act","tag-canberra","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}